Abstract This paper investigates the competitiveness of small and medium-scale maize milling enterprises in South Africa from estimates of a translog stochastic cost frontier model. Results suggest that small and medium-scale maize mills in South Africa are cost-inefficient, operating at 59...

The difference between hypothetical and real values when evaluating consumers’ preferences (termed ‘hypothetical bias’) has received significant attention in scientific literature, as the outcome of this bias is often an overestimation of willingness to pay (WTP) values. This is the main...

This study focuses on the skills requirements and the development thereof among 109 interviewed formal sector agribusiness companies in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, and South Africa. The study was conducted in the context of anticipated dramatic changes in Africa’s food consumption...

A time series model is estimated to identify the interrelation among prices on the international and the EU domestic market for butter. Although the findings were not derived from a causal model, the inspection of the data provides economically reasonable and important insights in structural...

The successful restructuring of Chinese industries is of immense importance not only for the continued development of China but also to the stability of the world economy. The transformation of the Chinese wool textile industry illustrates well the many problems and pressures currently facing...

In this paper, we use the experience of Kenya's failing Coffee Cooperatives to show that, under certain circumstances, membership based organizations can give rise to perverse incentives that undermine the benefits of organizing and lead to a reduction in member productivity and welfare. We...

The only commercial genetically modified (GM) subsistence food crop is white maize in South Africa, which was released in 2001/2. This paper reports on the performance of insect resistant (Bt) white maize grown by smallholders in Hlabisa, KwaZulu Natal, where the other development is minimum...

In this paper, we examine the existence of agglomeration effect on production in the Japanese food industry from 1985 to 2000 using plant-level 4-digit subclassification, panel dataset and new agglomeration index in Akune and Tokunaga (2005), and Tokunaga, Kageyama, and Akune (2005), based on...

In the course of the past decades major transformations in the Italian food industry induced considerable structural changes: on one hand, the creation of large industrial groups, with substantial input of foreign capital and, on the other, the concentration and geographic specialisation of...